What Sadist Came Up with Dodgeball, Anyway?
by bumbles bees
Summary: Newbie fic: He calls them 'post-gym-class panic attacks' and he talks about them like they're perfectly normal. Jane, Roderick, friendship with shades of something more.


Jane's excited. Really excited. Someone's given her father a guitar pick used, and signed, by B.B. King. Her father, too straight-laced and traditional to understand what Jane knows in her heart, passes it on to her without a thought. Bubbling over with enthusiasm, she squirms in her seat at the thought of it all day. That pick that has touched _those_ hands, _those _strings… She has few male heroes, for there are women like Ida B. Wells and Rosalind Franklin and Surya Bonaly to be worshipped, but B.B. is one of them, for 'Why I Sing The Blues' as much as for his nimble, sparsely melodic solos and the beaming supernova of a smile he gave her when, as a little girl, she saw him in concert and nearly exploded with pent-up joyful energy.

When Jane loves, she loves deeply.

Jane knows immediately that one person will understand as her father didn't. When the bell rings to signal lunch she bolts to her locker to get the pick and goes off in search of him.

The problem with Roderick is that for a big kid with questionable fashion sense, he's surprisingly good at making himself disappear completely. He has a way of walking with his head down and his shoulders pulled inward. The first time he does it when she's around, she walks right by him without noticing.

Other times, he simply hides. She's noticed this trend.

Today she finds him just inside an empty classroom, standing with his back to the wall where he can't be seen from the door. He has his headphones on and his eyes closed tight and he's breathing oddly.

"Hi."

This time it's quiet enough that he hears her right away. The headphones come off. Before he switches off the sound she hears a rhythmic net of sound that she recognizes instantly as Kimbra. He looks normal again.

"Everything alright?" asks Jane. She doesn't like the way he was breathing a second ago – little shallow breaths.

"Yeah," says Roderick, with a shrug and a blasé little smile. "Yeah, I'm good now."

"Something happened." She's interrogating him a little, staring him in the eye. She's glad she wore heels that day. Jane is not a tall girl. But being small makes people treat her as though she's delicate and cute, and she loathes it. In four-inch heels, with the height of her hair added on, she's taller than many of the boys, and that feels good.

Roderick's cowed, as she knew he would be. "Jane-" He searches for words. "Seriously, it's okay. It's not a big deal."

She tilts her head, thinking of last week at the Homecoming bonfire, when he drifted off for no apparent reason.

Roderick seems to read her thoughts. "You… don't have to check on me. I mean, I appreciate it, nobody's ever bothered before and that's, that's nice, but…"

"You keep disappearing."

He shrugs. "I get overwhelmed."

Jane hasn't felt overwhelmed in a very long time. She glances at the headphones in his hands. "Do those help?" she asks, gesturing to the headphones.

"Yeah. They cancel out some background noise and then I put on something with a compelling central melody and it gives me something to focus on."

Jane frowns in thought. She gets the sense it's not the whole story. It sounds like classic introversion, but if Roderick is an introvert, then he's an introvert who's capable of being surprisingly loud, dynamic, high-energy and goofy in the choir room, and it's not that Jane doesn't think such people exist, it's just that the atmosphere of the choir room is jam-packed with stimulus, often bordering on chaos. She sees no reason why he clings to his headphones in McKinley's hallways and cafeteria but not in the choir room.

Later, she'll come to a better understanding, and be angry with herself for being so dense, but it's not really her fault. She hasn't allowed an insult to really hurt her since she was five years old. She has the strong armor of self-esteem, and Roderick just… doesn't.

Jane tilts her head, narrows her eyes. "_That_ was overwhelmed? You were hyperventilating. You're scaring me."

"No! Nonono." He holds out his hands, half-concerned and half-laughing. Clearly trying very hard to reassure her. "Normal overwhelmed is just oh, hey, let's listen to something chill and maybe not talk to anybody for a sec. That was more of a post-gym-class panic attack."

If he _is_ trying to reassure her, he's just failed. Jane has no time for whiners. But Roderick acts like it's just a regular day in the life and that's what scares her.

"It's probably not an actual panic attack," Roderick babbles. "Just funnily enough I don't handle standing in front of twenty hyperfit meatheads having nerf balls thrown at me for an hour straight all that well. Why does dodgeball exist? What sadist came up with that?"

Jane doesn't even really know what dodgeball _is_. Private schools have better notions of what constitutes a sport. "And all that's without the headphones…"

For the first time, true pain registers on his face. "I hear every word they say," he mumbles, to the ground. "I can put them back on in the changerooms, but they're worse for... other reasons..." Then he seems to pluck himself up, remembering that she's there, and gives her a hopeful little half-smile. "But it's only twice a week."

Jane puts her hands on her hips and scowls at the ground. "You need to drop that class," she says after a moment.

He winces. "I can't. Sylvester made it mandatory for me. Three-point plan… thing."

"Then she and I are going to have issues."

"Jane…"

"What? Are you going to accept defeat that easily?"

"Yes. Yes I am. I come from a long line of defeatists. It's a miracle I'm here at all."

She actually recognizes that he's joking, which is a phenomenon that occurs once every seventeen years, when the planets align just so. It earns him a smile that fades too quickly. "You shouldn't be scared to go to class," says Jane, with something between righteous anger and pleading sadness. She doesn't want him to feel this way. She hasn't known him long, but he's sweet, and charmingly earnest about his oddness. He doesn't deserve the way they kick him around.

"I can handle it. Really." His hand touches her arm. Somehow that single touch conveys both gratitude and a request. _Don't fight for me. _

Jane squeezes his hand.

It's meant to be reassuring. But as soon as she's done it he bites his lip and looks down. She feels a sting of strange tension.

She thinks absurdly that she'd really like to kiss him. He's got nice lips. But there's a wall of awkwardness between them now. Jane casts about for something to say. Then she remembers the guitar pick.

Roderick forgets all trace of awkwardness. His excitement is everything she'd hoped for. He cups it in his hands and stares. "This… touched Lucille…"

"He used it at a show in 1985, it's older than us-"

"I may cry."

"I _did_ cry."

It's only later, when they're finally through being giddy over B.B. King's guitar pick, that it occurs to her that Roderick is usually more on edge when other people are nearby – and yet the moment she walked into the room, he calmed.

She wonders what makes her different.


End file.
